Yeah, all of a sudden when I move the cursor to open the Workshelf-dock, my computer hangs for, maybe 10 seconds, and then the dock appears! I haven't done anything to my knowledge that could make this happen. Help!

Unfortunately this could be any number of things, from content stored in slow network storage to a failing hard drive to a wrong activation setting.

When you say 'WorkShelf dock', do you mean the dock or the Shelf (tabbed dock)? Also, when you mean 'your computer' do you mean *everything including your desktop* just freezes (in which case I would think pending hardware failure) or just the dock?

Hmm, I mean the dock and everything, including desktop.

If the desktop (and other applications) are also hanging, that is definitely not normal.

On a preemptive multi-tasking environment such as Windows that is normally an indication of pending hardware failure. E.g.: you mouse over the dock, which tries to refresh some data by accessing your hard disk, but the data is stored in a bad/failing sector on your hard drive - everything hangs while the system tries to read the data in that bad sector over and over until it succeeds or times out.

Or it could also be caused by a slow media problem (for instance, your hard disk is set to stop spinning after a certain period of inactivity; when the dock tries to access the data it has to wait for the hard disk to spin up) but in those cases only the dock would freeze temporarily, not the rest of the system.

Given that this is a recent issue (while there were none before and you haven't done anything that might justify what is happening), check your Windows Event Log for problems: Windows Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer -> Windows Logs -> System. Look for any yellow or red exclamation marks.

Damn! I found loads of exclamation marks! I will throw this damn computer out the window, I think!

Sorry to hear about that. Look at the bright side: you found out something was wrong before you lost any data.

Now go make a backup of the data in your hard disk if you haven't already, and Merry Xmas!

Merry christmas to you too Jorge!